“Placeshifting” refers to shifting the viewing location of television or other media content from one place (e.g., a home television) to another. Many commercially-available placeshifting devices and systems now allow viewers to placeshift content from their home televisions, television receivers, set top boxes (STBs), digital video recorders (DVRs) and/or the like to any other locations where network access can be obtained. Media content can be “placeshifted”, for example, by providing a streaming media connection from the placeshifting device to a mobile phone, portable computer and/or other media player that may be located in a different room, building or other remote place that is nevertheless accessible via a local area and/or wide area network. Typically, the media player controls the remotely-located media source to select programming, change channels, fast forward/rewind, and so forth.
Generally speaking, it is desired that users have the same experiences with placeshifted content that they would have if they were located in front of their actual televisions. In practice, however, this is difficult to achieve. The realities of video encoding, network communications and other factors can often create latency that detracts from the user experience. If a user changes a channel within a placeshifted media stream, for example, it may take several seconds until programming from the new channel is obtained and a new stream with the content from the newly-selected channel can be provided. During this time, the user simply waits until the content is available. This delay can be particularly frustrating during “channel surfing”, in which the user would like to scan the content provided on multiple channels, but must wait until the placeshifted media stream can be updated for each channel change commanded by the user.
It is therefore desirable to create systems and methods that are able to reduce latency that occurs upon channel changes or the like. Other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.